A Good Murder (ITV1); Wilson (ITV1)
KATE'S mother - her nagging, domineering, possessive mother - liked to read a decent thriller. "Why does nobody write a good murder these days," she asked.
This is a question posed to ITV1 schedulers who've earmarked Monday and Tuesday at 9pm as thriller time. Sometimes they call it a psychological drama, but it amounts to the same thing - three people, one of whom is Martin Kemp or another ex-soap star, in a complex plot involving betrayal, adultery, a secret from the past and, of course, a killing.
A Good Murder had the advantage of a higher class of cast than normal, energetic sex scenes (no discreet fumbling beneath the sheets here) and a plot that didn't always add up but kept you wanting to find out what came next.
Artist Kate (Juliet Aubrey) was stuck tending her sick, but not sick enough to stop giving orders and ruin her daughter's love life, mother (Anna Massey). A chisel-jawed East European hunk (Mirek Sumunek) picked up Kate at the National Portrait Gallery, which beats hanging around street corners waiting for a woman who can make an illegal immigrant legal and help you escape the clutches of the Russian Mafia to whom you owe a great deal of money.
The plot thickened with a brother who felt he was losing out on his mother's inheritance, his pregnant wife stooping to devious tactics to get her hands on the loot and their young daughter who gave the game away by telling everyone about Kate's "bit of rough". It was tosh, but superior tosh.
Wilson is a clear, concise and straightforward TV biography of Harold Wilson, who won more general elections than any other Prime Minister in the 20th century. This two-parter is graced by the testimony of both his family and Labour colleagues, who don't feel obliged to be nice about the man with the pipe - which, incidentally, some suggested was little more than a prop for cartoonists and means of getting his picture in the paper.
As the first grammar school PM after three Old Etonians, he heralded a new era in British politics. Some members of his own Cabinet thought him a political lightweight but he was an important figure for many young people as the swinging Sixties got under way.
"People say he was devious. Maybe he was in politics, but he was a good Yorkshireman," said Lady Mary Wilson.
The first part took him up to 1967 and the Rhodesia crisis. Like other PMs, a fight with another country restored his standing at home.
He also influenced fashion in post-war Britain as President of the Board of Trade by advocating women wearing shorter skirts to save clothing coupons. "There's no sense in making skirts longer. If we do, there will be fewer of them," he told the electorate.
Published: ??/??/2004
